Finding People to Help with Kids When Everyone Runs Away Getting volunteers for kids ministry is like asking people to donate a kidney. Everyone thinks kids are adorable until you ask them to spend an hour with twelve of them hopped up on animal crackers and fruit punch. Been trying

Mason ate glue last week. Not a little bit of glue. Like, a substantial amount of Elmer's glue while I was telling the story of Jesus feeding the 5000. And somehow he still remembers that Jesus shared food with everyone because when his mom packed him lunch yesterday

Oh my god you guys. I volunteered to help with Sunday school ONE TIME because they were desperate and now somehow I'm the person who shows up every week to wrangle a bunch of seven-year-olds who apparently consumed nothing but pixie sticks for breakfast. Last Sunday I walked

Okay so last Christmas I literally hid in my pantry eating cookie dough at 6pm because my "simple" holiday party had turned into some kind of nightmare where nothing worked and I was pretty sure my guests were going to show up to find me sobbing into a

Okay so last Sunday this new volunteer walks in. Sweet lady, super eager. I'm thinking great, finally some help with the preschoolers. Five minutes later she's standing in the middle of craft chaos looking like she might cry. That's when it hit me. I

Sunday morning. 7:47 AM. I'm in the church parking lot googling "Jesus feeds 5000 craft ideas" on my phone. This was my life for two years. Every. Single. Sunday. I'd piece together random lessons from the internet. Print coloring pages that may or

"Let's go around the circle and say our name and favorite color!" Dead silence. Twenty third-graders staring at me like I just asked them to solve calculus. Madison starts picking at the carpet. Tyler's already halfway under the table. That was my first Sunday

So Ethan walks up to me last summer. Middle of VBS. Day three. We're doing pirates. "Ms. Jennifer, didn't we do pirates when I was little?" Yes, Ethan. Yes we did. When you were in kindergarten. And first grade. And apparently now in fourth

I almost lost my best volunteer last year. She'd been teaching second grade Sunday school for three years straight. Never missed a week. Then one Sunday she pulled me aside and said she was thinking about stepping down. I panicked. Asked what was wrong. Turns out nothing was